Fotor has always been one of the premier camera and photo editing apps. It’s just released version 6, and this version is free, and all the in-app purchases are free too.

Even more interesting, the app has a method for you to submit your favorite photos, taken or edited on Fotor, and let some experts have a look at them, while you compete for some cash prizes.

Fotor calls the submissions ‘Events’ and it features weekly competition, topics and activities. It’s a unique ideas, and Fotor has the clout with iPhone users to see that it gets some traction.

I’ve always liked editing photos with Fotor, and this new version has all the features of previous paid versions, like 6 picture taking modes, 13 scene presets to adjust the lighting on your finished photo, and a lot of the usual took like cropping, vignettes, shadows, curve adjustments, and a host of filters. There are also a wide assortment of frames and options for adding text captions. When you are in the app, some of the options appear as add-in purchases, but when you download them, at least for now, there is no charge.

The collage tools are quite strong, and there is a ‘magazine’ option to let you access built in magazine-like templates.

About the only thing I don’t like about Fotor is that it’s stuck in portrait mode. If the editor allowed me to work in landscape mode, I’d have a bigger image. It’s really the only negative I’ve seen in the app, other than the lack of HDR processing, but Fotor has a separate HDR app. Still, for completeness, I’d like to see it migrated into the main Fotor app.

The in-app purchase modules, as mentioned, are now free, and there are 10 of them. No restrictions on downloading them, but I can’t guarantee they will remain free forever.

The idea of contests and having pros look at your photos will certainly appeal to some people. It’s not the same as getting ‘oooooos’ and ‘aaahhss’ from friends.

The help and comments may push you in directions that you never expected to go. In my own photography, I am always glad to have a fresh set of eyes take a look. There are plenty of online forums and photo sharing sites for this, but Fotor has come up with a unique approach.

For free, Fotor is certainly worth a download. It’s a capable camera controller, and a really fine editor. The ‘Events’ feature is icing on the cake.

The long-awaited Hipstamatic 300 is about a month away from release. The app has been extensively beta tested for several months and is just about ready for prime time. Hipstamatic’s developers have released a video that doesn’t give anything away about the new app but if you look closely, may give you some clues about some of the update’s new features.

Ever since its release years ago, one of the things that HipstaFiends have loved about Hipstamatic is that you have to know and choose your film and lens combinations before you shoot (or shoot in the wonderful shake-to-randomize mode). It’s also one of the things that many Hipstamatic users have hated most about the app throughout the years.

As a beta tester myself, I’m sworn to secrecy and can’t say much at this time. About all I can say is that I think Hipstamatic have done this update right. Hipstamatic 300 is a very spiffy, very impressive piece of software. Hipstamatic’s developers definitely did not break or ruin one of my favorite iPhone photography apps.

Hipstamatic 300 is scheduled to be released this August.

We’ll have more as soon as were able to talk about it. For now, enjoy the teaser video:

There are quite a few apps that can take a photo of a person or landscape and turn it into credible art, making it an oil painting, a water color, or a pencil sketch.

PhotoViva ($1.99) does a nice job of this task, and also serves as a pretty capable photo editor too. As there’s no shortage of photo editors, let’s take a look at what the artistic parts of PhotoViva offer.

PhotoViva features

Once you import your photo you can select brushes and copy image features by cloning or painting. The brushes are quite configurable, letting you select the type of brush or effect, and even changing the angle of the stroke. Brushes can track the direction of movement, or you can set the brush direction and it won’t vary from that. You can also change the hue, saturation and blur of brush strokes as you paint.

The effects are quite unique, and come out looking very artistic. This is an app that was done with a lot of thought and artistic sensitivity.

My own PhotoViva tests

I tried the app on some landscape photos and was quite pleased with the results. I used large brush strokes to fill my digital canvas, and then used smaller strokes to show more detail. In copy mode, you can copy the source image to your canvas. You can choose your canvas color, and add color noise to vary the colors being laid down.

There are some interesting framing effects, that let you put a frame within a frame that gives a very nice unique look.

For detailed work, you can pan and zoom your photo easily, and there are sliders for saturation and sharpening. A fascinating Autopaint mode just starts painting when you turn it on. The app helpfully provides some images to work on, but most of you will have plenty of photos you want to try.

PhotoViva hasn’t had a lot of publicity, but it is very good at what it does. The more I explored, the more I found, so in every way the app exceeded my expectations. Help is included, but the detailed help is linked to online instructions. You can open any photo at one of several resolutions. I used the highest, so I would have no loss from my original quality after a save. ON some older phones, you won’t get full resolution. The app requires iOS 5 or later, and is fully compatible with the latest iPhone 6 models.

Photos can be sent to your camera roll, and most of the social photo sharing services are supported like Instagram, Facebook and others.

The creators of PhotoViva have taken a fresh approach to iOS photography, and I liked this app a lot. It’s universal, so it runs fine on iPads as well as iPhones.

I can’t say this is a one touch app. It’s designed to let you fiddle and experiment. It isn’t always obvious what each control does, but it is easy to try things and see the result. The edited photos can be of very high quality and should push your creative buttons.

Give it a try, and see if you like it, but be sure to give it a chance, as the more you explore, the more powerful this app is.

Download PhotoViva

]]>0Mel Martinhttp://azdeepskies.comhttp://lifeinlofi.com/?p=291232015-07-21T13:23:25Z2015-07-21T16:23:12ZFrom Life in LoFi: iPhoneography:

If you are taking videos on your iPhone, there are a few nice editors to choose from. Of course iMovie comes free with new iOS devices, and you can but it from Apple for 5 bucks if you don’t have it. Also, the Camera+ people have just offered a video editing app called Vee for Video which we reviewed earlier this month. Cameo Video Editor (free) has a bit of a history. Vimeo bought the app in 2014, and completely rebuilt it from the ground up. The app is simpler to use, offers some simple titling, and a choice of music. Free is always good, and the app is designed to get people to contribute to Vimeo’s growing video network. To really use the app for sharing, you need a Vimeo or a Facebook log in. There is also an option to skip the login. After that you can record video from your iPhone, or import from your camera roll. What Cameo does Clips can be trimmed and joined with some swiping on the screen, and there are also several pre-done templates for video and audio to help you along. When you’re done you can save your work to your [...]

If you are taking videos on your iPhone, there are a few nice editors to choose from. Of course iMovie comes free with new iOS devices, and you can but it from Apple for 5 bucks if you don’t have it. Also, the Camera+ people have just offered a video editing app called Vee for Video which we reviewed earlier this month.

Cameo Video Editor (free) has a bit of a history. Vimeo bought the app in 2014, and completely rebuilt it from the ground up. The app is simpler to use, offers some simple titling, and a choice of music.

Free is always good, and the app is designed to get people to contribute to Vimeo’s growing video network.

To really use the app for sharing, you need a Vimeo or a Facebook log in. There is also an option to skip the login. After that you can record video from your iPhone, or import from your camera roll.

What Cameo does

Clips can be trimmed and joined with some swiping on the screen, and there are also several pre-done templates for video and audio to help you along. When you’re done you can save your work to your camera roll, or upload to Vimeo, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Videos can also be stored in the cloud and edited later.

Some negatives

I found using the app somewhat less than a joyful experience. After creating a user account, I imported some clips form my camera roll. They downloaded and I was ready too trim them. But the editing process is opaque. Once I select the editing icon, what then? I can adjust in and out points, but how to I accept them? There is nothing on screen to tell me. The built-in FAQs weren’t detailed either. I did find a demo video on the Cameo website, but it referred to the older version.
Titling is automatic, but you don’t get a lot of choices, other than title positions. Music selections are quite nice, but you have to use the music provided. Nothing from your own library is allowed. You can’t mix the provided music with natural sound to your taste. You either turn the live sound off or on. No level controls are available.

Conclusions

Having gone over the negatives, i will say that once you figure out some of the not obvious things the app is easy to use. Clips can be re-ordered by dragging, and the video quality is high, something that Vimeo feels strongly about. So do we.

The app is very focused on assembling nice looking videos quickly, and I think that is accomplished, but a how-to video would be most welcome. Making an app simple also involves not hiding features or not making them obvious.

If you use your iPhone for video, Cameo is worth a download, but you may have to continue your search for more features. Vee for Video is a good bet, has a wealth of features, and it’s cheaper than iMovie.

Cameo is designed to run on the latest iPhone hardware, and I saw no issues running it under iOS 8 or beta 2 of iOS 9. It’s not a universal app, so while it will run on an iPad the experience is not optimal.

Here’s an intriguing news item straight out of left field. DxO, known professionals for their photo software for testing optical quality, has announced an add-on camera for iPhones that will get you 20 megapixels and raw shooting in a small device DxO says will perform like a full sized DSLR.

The camera, called the DxO One is slated to ship in the fall, will sell for $599.00 and pre-orders are already being taken.

The device plugs into your lightning connector on your iPhone or iPad, and uses your screen as a sophisticated viewfinder. The camera can be used without the iPhone connection, but you’ll have to use a small optical viewfinder to set your shot.

The DxO One has a 1” sensor, can take photos at ƒ1.8 and shoot 1080p video. It has it’s own RAW format for images, which need to be stored on the DxO cameras MicroSD card. JPEGs can be stored directly on your iPhone.

Batteries are contained on the DxO one, and are reported to last for about 200 photos. According to the company, Apple has been closely involved in the design of the camera, and as yet, there is nothing being said about an Android version. (Another reason to love your iPhone). The camera will require a free iOS app to run it when attached, and it launches as soon as the camera is plugged in to your iPhone.

The DxO weighs only 3.8 oz. and it’s 2.65 inches tall. It’s dwarfed in size by an iPhone 6. DxO says the camera will have a full range of adjustments, just what you would expect from a full-sized DSLR.

DxO says the camera has an ISO range of 100 up to 51,200, and it includes a SuperRAW mode which takes 4 individual RAW frames and assembles them when connected to a Mac or PC using a USB 2.0 port.

This is a really interesting development. I don’t see Apple having an internal camera with these kinds of specs anytime soon. If Apple planned that, the DxO One wouldn’t exist, since Apple is cooperating.

It’s certainly a smaller package than any DSLR, even when the DxO One is attached to an iPhone. I think that people’s hesitation will be about the price and whether they ant to carry something separate from their iPhone. As we all know, the iPhone has become a major player in the consumer area, and of curse many pros are using iPhones and getting terrific results.

The DxO shows some very fresh thinking from a well respected company that is really respected by pro photographers.

We’ve asked for a review sample, and I’ll certainly have some thoughts when I get the camera in my hands.

The company is taking pre-orders now and expects a September ship date.

I consider this an exciting development for iPhoneographers, and the photography field in general

Obscura Camera is an interesting camera app that aims to get the software out of the way so you can take pictures without worrying about how you interact with your iPhone camera and how you can get quick access to your most needed camera controls.

There is plenty of manual access to things like focus and exposure settings, or it can be completely automatic.

Specific features include manual ISO and shutter speed controls, focus and exposure lock, flash controls, 3 grid overlays (rule of 3rd, circle and square) and 9 filters. More filters are available as an in-app purchase, but the basic app is free.

The main idea here is every control is reachable with one thumb, and the app has achieved that goal cleanly.

Using the app is really quite easy. The control are white text on a dark background, and very easy to read, even in bright sunlight. The controls work in any iPhone orientation, appearing at the bottom of the screen in portrait mode, and to the left in landscape mode. When you are in landscape mode and rotate the camera 180 degrees, the control labels flip, which is a nice touch.

Filters can also be applied by dragging your thumb (or any finger actually) left and right. The filters are all pretty effective, and the developer sells more in two packages, one for $1.99, the other for $4.99. It’s nice to have the filters built-in, but I think most iPhoneograhpers will just edit in the app of their choice and apple those filters.

This app is just for taking pictures. Once the picture is done, there is no editing, cropping or adjustments possible. And no way to share it. I don’t consider that a minus, the app is dedicated to getting good pictures quickly and effortlessly, and it succeeds very well at that.

What the app brings to the table is a complete re-thinking of what controls should be presented to the photographer, in what format, where should they be onscreen, and how much dexterity is needed to get the picture you want.

Most of the GUI is pretty obvious, but you may not notice the filters unless you swipe the screen. A single tap puts your camera in auto mode, a double tap switches to the front facing camera. I expect most people will find this through experimentation. There’s no help included. I’m sure the reason is to keep the screen very clean, but some will undoubtedly miss the features the app has.

I like Obscura Camera. It does make me concentrate on the photo, without overloading me with controls. Still, I can’t help feeling Oscura is the perfect name for the app, because some of those features aren’t obvious.

Still, this is a recommended free app, and I think if you give it a try you’ll be a regular user. Developer Ben McCarthy has some sample images on his web site.

The app requires iOS 8 or later. It ran fine under iOS 9 beta, and it’s optimized for the latest iPhone hardware.

Download Obscura Camera

]]>2Mel Martinhttp://azdeepskies.comhttp://lifeinlofi.com/?p=290832015-07-16T04:54:23Z2015-07-15T19:03:45ZFrom Life in LoFi: iPhoneography:

Pixelmator is already one of the best image editors around for the iPhone, but a just published update brings even more to the Pixelmator party. The repair tool, similar to Photoshop’s Content Aware tool, is about 5 times faster and it’s more precise. A new feature is Dynamic Touch. It lets you adjust the stroke size of all the retouch tools by letting you use different parts of your fingertip to change the size of the brush. Here’s some more of what as been updated: (Some items are bug fixes, the majority are enhancements.) • The Blur effect lets you apply more blur to your images. • Enhanced the look of the Pinch and Bump effects, so now they look even better. • The Effects preview thumbnails of very wide images were too wide. Fixed. • Now you can Cancel or Apply an effect with the settings popover open. • The Clone tool now starts cloning grouped layers when and where you ask it to. • The Retouch tools now work just as they should on layers with Lock Alpha on. • The rhombus shape looks much more crisp. • The Font Size setting had no effect on a few [...]

Pixelmator is already one of the best image editors around for the iPhone, but a just published update brings even more to the Pixelmator party.

The repair tool, similar to Photoshop’s Content Aware tool, is about 5 times faster and it’s more precise.

A new feature is Dynamic Touch. It lets you adjust the stroke size of all the retouch tools by letting you use different parts of your fingertip to change the size of the brush.

Here’s some more of what as been updated: (Some items are bug fixes, the majority are enhancements.)

• The Blur effect lets you apply more blur to your images.
• Enhanced the look of the Pinch and Bump effects, so now they look even better.
• The Effects preview thumbnails of very wide images were too wide. Fixed.
• Now you can Cancel or Apply an effect with the settings popover open.
• The Clone tool now starts cloning grouped layers when and where you ask it to.
• The Retouch tools now work just as they should on layers with Lock Alpha on.
• The rhombus shape looks much more crisp.
• The Font Size setting had no effect on a few fonts. Fixed.
• The values of the Color Balance settings used to stay the same after applying Undo. Fixed.
• Previously, after canceling color adjustments for text, shape or grouped layers, you were still able to Undo the adjustments that you never made. Fixed.
• Removed Undo Image Size after creating a new Custom Image.

I gave the app a run through on some recent photos I’ve taken. Yes, the speed of the Repair Tool is greatly enhanced, and performance is now similar to the desktop version of Pixelmator. I removed a large rock from a photo I took in the Alabama Hills and the removal was clean and fast. The improved filters are indeed improved, and, for example, blur now has a much greater range than before.

Pixelmator existed as an iPad only app for quite some time, but since it’s come to the iPhone it solves a lot of problems for people wanting to to pro-style edits in the field.

At $4.99 Pixelmator is a bargain. The update is available now from the iOS App Store. If you already have the app, it’s probably updated by now.

For Adobe iOS apps

First up is video sync. Adobe calls it Video on the go — Add, view, and share videos in your collections from your iPad or iPhone; sync to Lightroom CC. Lightroom for iOS also gets adjustable vignettes, and better color control with a new Color/B&W adjustment tool for both the iPhone and iPad version of Lightroom. The company has also added precise tone controls using a new Tone Curve adjustment tool.

There is also Send to Lightroom — On your iPad or iPhone, add Mix creations to your Lightroom collections to organize, edit, enhance and share incredible images, anytime, anywhere. (Now with the ability to pull to save your creations to Lightroom).

There are also new editing capabilities — allowing you to work more easily with your photos with the ability to control opacity and flip them.

Auto Crop makes it easy to crop your shots using common sizes and ratios, including square, 4×6 and 3×5. (Previously only on iPad version).

These updated apps weren’t made available early to the press, so I’ll see them when you see them, but I’ll give them a thorough run through and report back on their significance.

Photoshop and Lightroom updates

If you are enrolled in Creative Cloud, that means you also have Photoshop and Lightroom running on your Mac, so there are solid updates on hand too. Photoshop gets some more noise and blur tools, but the big headline is increased performance of the heal and patch tools Previously, the edits appeared after you life took your finger off your mouse button. That’s when the rendering would take place. Now, you see the changes as you draw, which is a welcome update. I haven’t used the new features, but saw them demonstrated online and they looked great.

Lightroom has added an adjustable haze control, that looks very realistic. It also works in reverse, actually eliminating haze in your photos. The only problem, and this is a problem that Adobe needs to address is, that this feature is for Lightroom for the Mac and PC. It isn’t a feature that has migrated to iOS. As a result, you can’t adjust or edit photos this way on iOS. Yet, Adobe is using these technologies to completely integrate your workflow. For that to really be 100% useful, all features need to be on all platforms.
Final Thoughts

Even with that caveat, Adobe has generally embraced mobile and brought very powerful editing tools to the iPhone and iPad. With a $9.99 a month subscription, you are covered for your laptop, desktop, and your mobile devices. If you are serious about photography, the creative Crowd plan is worthy of your attention. If you are already on board, you’ve got some nice new features to enhance your images.

With all the HDR programs for the iPhone out there, there are actually only a few that let you set the brackets manually and keep every image before merging.

Auto-bracketing(AEB) was around before HDR imaging. It let photographers take a multiple photos at different exposure compensation and just chose the best overall exposure. When HDR became more popular, the bracketing function was used to get multiple exposures and merge them.

What AutoBracket HDR does

Happily, AutoBracket HDR ($1.99) does both, and gives you control of the range of exposures. When you start up the app, you can see where the camera is pointed, and you can select exposure compensation anywhere from none to six f-stops on either side. You tap the camera button, and the three shots are saved, and you get an option to merge them into a single HDR.

The app lets you see a useful histogram, and you can control focus and exposure independently. After you take your images, there are sliders for vibrance, highlights, shadows, contrast and brightness. There is also an auto setting, but I think most people will chose control instead of automation.

AutoBracket HDR also offers timed capture, and some filters for effects when you’re done. There is a handy grid with the classic divisions at thirds if you want to have some composition help

I really appreciated the range of exposures in tough lighting conditions. In some cases, I used the best of three. In other cases, merging the three exposures into an HDR made the most sense. I thought the resulting HDR image was never over-the-top, always looking natural but with greater dynamic range.

The app lets you use either iPhone camera, but I think most users will concentration the higher resolution rear camera.

Using AutoBracket HDR

Trying my normal bright window/dark room tests I thought the app did well. The result was natural, and not too jazzed up. It was a pretty close simulation of what my eye saw, which is better than what most unassisted cameras could do. Outside, with bright skies and deep shadows, the results were again pleasing. It held its own with many of the other HDR apps I use on a regular basis.

I saw some comments on crashing from users. It was quite stable under the latest version of iOS 8. It was less stable under the beta of iOS 9, but lots of apps are.

Photos retained their native resolution after editing. There are options to save photos to social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and of course you can email them or send them via messaging. Photos can be edited roughly, and there is a nice selection of filters, but nothing extravagant, and I think most iPhoneographers will go to their favorite external editor for finishing touches.

AutoBracket HDR is a worthy addition to your digital camera bag. I found it useful for just picking one backed shot was i did for creating HDR images.

Autobracket HDR is $1.99 and that’s a fair ask. The app is universal and works on either iPads or iPhones. It’s optimized for the new larger iPhone screens.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen any real updates to the iPhone Polaroid apps. After all, there’s not much you can do once you’ve nailed the T-600 film and frame and all of its intricacies, right?

Polamatic (still $0.99) topped the game Thursday with its latest release. Polamatic 5.0 now features not just the classic T600 Polaroid film, but nine other films and frames as well.

In addition to the T600, film, Polamatic now features nine additional film types: Type 100, Type 80, SX-70, Image Spectra, 4×5 Film, 8×10 film, roll film, 300 film, and 500 film. Each film has a dozen or so tonal variations which mimic the real variations you would get using the films. Many of the variations have random chemical leaks and textures that can be rotated by a tap.

Each film has more borders and each one shows varying degrees of texture and wear. Each border is custom designed for the film, not stretched to fit which can cause weird frame distortions.

The film recreations and borders look authentic. Even better, they look like you remember them. Polamatic is one of a small number of photo apps that’s licensed by Polaroid and that shows in the details you’ll find throughout the photos.

The interface has been redesigned as well and now features an even leaner look. And now everything is included in the cost of the app. There are no more extra in-app purchases.

iPhoneography – shoot and share instantly – can trace its roots back to the instant photography that Edwin land and Polaroid pioneered. I remember shooting with several of these films when I was a teen, especially the classic T600. That’s Polaroid to me and it reaches me on a nostalgic level like no other photo app recreation can. Yours may be the Spectra film or the double-lobed 500 film. Polamatic is the first Polaroid app to feature all of the company’s classic retro styles. Polamatic is the ultimate tribute to classic instant photography and a Polaroid enthusiast’s dream.

It’s great to see any good Polaroid app released or updated. This Polamatic update goes beyond maintenance, iOS 8 compatibility and bugfixes. It’s the comprehensive Polaroid photo app.

Download Polamatic

Here’s the App Store description for Polamatic 5.0:

Well that took a while… let’s see here, what’s not new?

-Polaroid Film: this is our most exciting feature of this update. You are no longer bound to the classic Type 600 film. Choose from 10 different film types: Type 600, Type 100, Type 80, SX-70, Image Spectra, 4×5 Film, 8×10 Film, Roll Film, 300 Film, and 500 Film
-New film types include a unique set of borders and filters to capture the look of the film. Over 120 filters in this update.
-“No Film” option allows you to apply our Polaroid filters to your photo without adding a border
-Batch Importing: import multiple photos at once into your Polamatic library
-Over 20 new fonts
-A redesigned and improved app experience
-Faster image processing
-Oh and an awesome new icon

As always we will never ask you to rate the app with annoying popups but please remember your reviews are very important to us. If you have a moment please leave us a review and let us know how you feel about the update!

P.S. This past May marked the 3-year mark since the initial release of Polamatic. We have really enjoyed working on the app and take pride in bringing you the best possible Polaroid experience. When we set out to create this latest version, we knew we wanted to approach the app from the most authentic point possible. We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could bring back all the classic film types from Polaroid? This is exactly what we did with this new update and are very pleased with the result – we hope you are too! Thank you to everyone who download the app and supported us from day one.

Vee for Video ($1.99 at launch plus in-app purchases) is the new all-in-one iPhone video app from the team who created all-in-one iPhone photo app Camera+. As such, expectations for Vee are high. Camera+ was a game changer when introduced and it’s matured excellently since. The “matured excellently” part is important.

Vee For Video is an all-in-one video app. You can shoot video, edit clips and scenes, apply filters and effects and even a soundtrack all from within the app. It’s fast, responsive, stable, and easy to use. Creating great-looking everyday videos is a snap.

I can see where comparisons will be drawn between Vee and the excellent FiLMic Pro or iMovie for iPhone. It’s an apples to pears comparison. FiLMiC Pro is targeted toward pro and more advanced videographers and is loaded with the tools and features they need. iMovie is an editor. By design, there are things it can do that Vee can’t and vice-versa.

Using Vee For Video

I spent some time using Vee For Video. You can see my Ingmar Bergman-esque results in my test video.

Vee makes shooting and editing everyday video about as easy as apping a photo. The interface is uncluttered and although you could start shooting with it out of the box, I recommend taking a few minutes to go through the short tutorial when the app first runs. It’ll help you down the road when you get to editing your clips.

For an all-in-one, Vee’s toolset is impressive although not complete. Most of the tools are out of the way until needed for distraction-free shooting. The camera features both the standard focus/exposure target which easily splits into seeparate focus and exposure targets with a two-finger tap. The viewfinder features a rule of thirds grid that can be toggled off and on. The grid is ghosted back which makes it present but not as distracting. It’s a detail that I like.

The Stabilizer tool is worth the price alone. Vee uses your device’s sensors to eliminate camera wobble and shaky video. I was skeptical, but the results are impressive. Vee’s stabilizer eliminates most of the small shakes that can get captured in hand-held video. In my test video, it softened many of the larger wobbles picked up by the camera when I was walking. It didn’t reduce all of the shakes, but it definitely minimized most of them noticeably and without visible artifacts in the video. When shooting video on an iPHone 5S or older, there is about a one-second delay between your subject and the viewfinder when using the stabilizer. It’s like shooting with an echo. Most of the time, I wasn’t bothered by the delay and the results on video are definitely worth it. Got an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus? The Stabilizer Pro mode virtually eliminates this delay. It’s turned off by default. I highly recommend that’s one of the first settings you check and switch.

Vee has a 3x digital zoom that when combined with the apps stabilizer mode, can create clear, fairly sharp video. Any type of zoom or telephoto really magnifies the shakes of handheld video and the combination of the zoom and stabilizer tool here really makes the video zoom a useful tool. Zoomed video created by Vee is less likely to give your viewers a headache.

A really handy tool that is not found in enough video apps is Vee’s Ghost mode. No, this does not instantly turn your videos into dark, shaky-cam horror movies. It leaves a ghosted image in your viewfinder of the last frame previously shot, allowing you to easily align or compose your next shot. Ghost mode is essential when you are making Robot Chicken-style stop motion animation. Unfortunately, Vee doesn’t also have a single frame mode making stop motion difficult to create.

Filters can be applied here and applied live as you shoot. They can also be changed applied in the editing window, so having them here is moe of a talking point than a usable tool. I prefer to shoot clean raw video and add effects in post.

Vee has several speed and resolution mode that you can shoot with. On my iPhone 5S, there were three – standard 1080p at 30 frames per second, 60 FPS and slightly smaller 720p HD, and 120 FPS also at 720p. There are additional speeds when used on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

]]>6Marty Yawnickhttp://typeadesign.comhttp://lifeinlofi.com/?p=288752015-07-03T20:21:08Z2015-06-10T17:57:41ZFrom Life in LoFi: iPhoneography:

The Instagram web interface is getting a makeover and the new user interface has rolling out to users this week. Basically, they removed what little flair the web interface had and didn't replace it with any worthwhile tools.

What happened to the Instagram website?

The Instagram web interface is getting a makeover and the new user interface has rolling out to users this week. The new UI eliminates what little clutter was in the already-uncluttered interface.

The rotating images in the header have been replaced with a simple, static, bio-style header with a plain background.

Photos are now presented larger and in rows of 3. Previously. Your Instagrams were displayed in rows of 5.

The new Web interface is a flat, responsive design-ish. The header collapses to fit your device, and the photos in your feed reduce to thumbnails but still maintain a three-across layout. My guess is that you don’t really need much of a responsive mobile interface because odds are the Instagram app is already installed on your device. Textures and other flair have been removed, colors muted, contrast gone. Overall, the new design is very flat and minimal.

Functionally, not much has been added. If you’re logged in on your computer, you can still follow other Instagrammers from their profile. That’s been a very handy feature and I’m glad that it’s untouched. A few tweaks have been made to your photo viewer. You still cannot edit your own comments on the web, but now it’s easier to delete comments.

Still no search tool in Instagram itself. To search tags and other criteria, you’ll need to use one of the clunky third-party Instagram search websites.

Instagram’s previous web profile

I actually do a lot in Instagram’s web interface. For me, it’s easier to comment on a real keyboard than the iPhone’s tiny one, so I’m in the web interface regularly. I liked the look of the old interface. I thought the photo header added personality to your Instagram profile. I thought the feed worked fine and didn’t mind that it was four or five across. What’s left now is lean and lightweight, but it also looks incomplete and like a bad free WordPress theme. I’m all for a good, modern makeover, but as a designer in my day job, I think this was an unneccessary makeover. Basically, Instagram removed what little fun the web interface had and didn’t replace it with any new worthwhile tools. What’s left behind is a pretty good reason to use the Instagram app.

I’m underwhelmed with the makeover. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

Although the iPhone and photography went nearly unmentioned in Monday’s Apple WWDC Keynote Address 2015, a little bit of news has leaked about some minor tweaks to Apple’s Camera app in iOS 9. Looks like someone broke an NDA….

Tuesday, AppleInsider shared a few more details, tidbits and screenshots of new features promised in iOS 9. Among them, minor Apple Camera app interface tweaks.

There’s not much. Here’s the entire mention:

The Camera app has seen some attention with new, simplified iconography. Labels have been abandoned in favor of stylized glyphs — “HDR Off” in iOS 8 simply becomes “HDR” with a slash through it, for instance.

Another minor interface change is that the HDR and Auto-Timer icons have been flipped, with HDR now sitting next to the front camera toggle in the menu bar.

It’s a minor change that makes a lot of sense. From a design standpoint, there are very few ways that visually and universally say “off” like a slash through it. It’s a detail that I’m surprised they didn’t change sooner.

The rest of the article talks about changes to Safari, Reminders, and the new Find My Friends widget. It’s short, but helps to start building a bigger picture of the new iOS update.

So far, it doesn’t look like Camera or Photos will get anywhere near the same amount of attention or changes that they did in the last two major iOS updates. If we hear of anyone else publicly breaking their non-disclosure agreements, we’ll share it here.

iOS 9 will be available this fall and will support every device iOS 8 currently does. Nice.

I’m liking everything I’m hearing about both iOS 9 and the upcoming Mac OS update, El Capitan. There just don’t seem to be very many iPhoneography-related software changes coming. I guess Apple is saving the big photo bombshell for the new hardware, right…?

]]>1Marty Yawnickhttp://typeadesign.comhttp://lifeinlofi.com/?p=288302015-06-09T04:25:43Z2015-06-08T21:56:22ZFrom Life in LoFi: iPhoneography:

It was a lot of Apple Watch, a lot of Mac OS, and not a lot of Helvetica at this year's Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference Keynote. There was no news relating to iPhoneography or Photos apps updates.

It was a lot of Apple Watch, a lot of Mac OS, and not a lot of Helvetica at this year’s Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference Keynote (WWDC 2015). There was no news relating to iPhoneography and fairly minimal news regarding Photos apps updates. More importantly, there were no new clues or confirmations about the next iPhone cameras – not even a hint at the name. I really wasn’t expecting any.

What we got today was a lot of cool stuff, though. Siri, Notes, Maps, overall OS improvements…. Other websites have some excellent coverage. These are a good roundup.

I now get the keynote’s teaser “The epicenter of change”. It’s an earthquake reference as in San Francisco earthquake. iOS 9 will drop Helvetica font in favor of San Francisco font, the font used throughout the Apple Watch OS. Many bloggers are applauding this as a victory for greater legibility. It’s actually Helvetica Neue and there are big differences between it and plain vanilla Helvetica. I, for one, never had a problem reading the Helvetica Neue and will be sad to see it go.

Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan

In keeping with the California namesakes, the new Mac OS 10.11 is called El Capitan and it looks pretty effin’ awesome! It promises better overall system performance and better app-level graphics performance as Apple will allow developers to offload more graphics-heavy work to the Mac’s GPU. If you work in Photoshop or any of the other Creative Cloud apps, this is good news. Even the GPU workarounds Adobe implemented in recent versions of Photoshop have significantly improved the performance this code and CPU-intensive app. Adobe has already demoed a couple of CC apps that use the new graphics engine.

Photos for Mac will get support for third-party editing tools. This would be similar to the hooks the iPhone and iPad use to “Open In…” and lets you seamlessly work in other apps and plug-ins. As more and more apps in the Apple ecosystem support this feature, it was only a matter of time before the native Mac OS apps really started working with each other on this level.

You can read more about El Capitan – the operating system, not the rock – here:

CameraBag 2 is our App of the Day today, June 8 — all three of them — for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They’re all on sale, discounted 50% each, right now for a limited time. The iPhone version is on sale for only $0.99, down a buck from its regular price of $1.99. The iPad version is on sale for $1.99, a savings of $2, and the Mac version is on sale for $14.99 — a huge savings of $15. These discounts are for a limited time.

The CameraBag 2 apps are classics — that may sound like review-speak for they may seem dated. In fact, they still do a few things better than most any other photo app available and that makes them worth a look.

CameraBag 2 lets you quickly and easily apply the look of many different types of film, print, and processes to your photos. Styles include several different types of color and black & white film stocks, weathered prints, borders, and various lo-fi cameras, with the option to create your own and to add more for free in-app.

Where CameraBag 2 still excels is that it has a lot of presets available for various lo-fi cameras. There are several presets alone which replicate Holga prints. There are a couple of Lomo-style presets and a generic Plastic Camera preset as well. The black & white presets are worthwhile as well and I had forgotten how good some of them are.

CameraBag 2 captures the look and feel of cheap, plastic camera prints better than most other iPhone photo apps available, and that’s pretty impressive considering how varied prints can look just from different Holga cameras.

Effects can be applied with a tap, then adjusted or randomized, which makes them appear much more natural and less “cookie-cutter” like many of the cheap overlay apps available.

The original CameraBag, released back in 2008, was the first iPhone photo filter app in the App Store. Apping, as we came to know it, was created. CameraBag 2 has more tools, filters, bells, whistles and you can easily add and restore presets you never use in the app’s home screen.

Often times, we’ll forget some pretty cool classic iPhoneography photo apps in favor of what’s new and exciting now. But some of the older apps still haven’t been bested. Although CameraBag 2 is showing its age, it’s still a great app for adding effects to your photos that recreate a very fun, very lo-fi, very analog style of photography.

CameraBag 2 is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows platforms.

Download CameraBag 2:

Life In LoFi’s App of the Day is our regular feature where we scour the Photo & Video section of the App Store to discover great deals on the best photo apps and hidden gems — one a day when we find a good one. Grab them fast because these deals don’t last long and the price can go up at any time.

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 6:43am PDT

Remember way back when in, like, those long-ago hazy years of 2011 and 2012 when there seemed to be InstaMeets every weekend and a global event every few months? One of the cool things about the meets was seeing how others looked at and shot the same subject. Sometimes, that’s called “shooting over” someone and it’s not always a good thing. But at the InstaMeets where there could be hundreds of iPhoneographers shooting a relatively few subjects, shooting the same subject becomes part of the event and gives everyone a different perspective (no pun intended).

Photographer Thomas Moore and Life In LoFi Publisher Marty Yawnick

I love Fort Worth and I’m very proud of my city. When visiting Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, be sure to try and schedule a day to visit Fort Worth’s Kimbell and Modern Art Museums. The Modern is a stunning building designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and a work of art on its own. Opportunities to photograph it with a small, photography-minded group are rare. In fact, my friend, photographer Thomas Moore, could only recall one other time when The Modern previously opened its doors for an exclusive public photographic event.

One of the cool things about shooting in a meet with other photographers is that despite the number of people in the building, most were very aware of each other’s shots, which made for a really nice shooting experience. Even though we only had an hour to shoot the galleries, if you could see your shot, odds are you could get it with a minimum wait. Nice.

Here are several of the iPhone photos I shot at #emptymodern, presented as they were shared on Instagram. I’ve also included a few notes on any apps I used to process. Because we only had an hour or so, I didn’t spend too much time apping each image. Most of the time, the photograph didn’t really need to be overly processed. I’ve also included a link to additional images that other mobile photographers have shared of the event. You know… for perspective.

InstaMeets, photo walks, or just hanging out with a few friends to “go shootin'”… I highly recommend you shoot in a group whenever you have the opportunity. It’s fun. It’s good to get out of the house. And either you’ll learn to see things a little differently or possibly help someone else to do so.

I mostly shot with Apple Camera today. I used Cortex Camera ($2.99) for images where I wanted to hold higher detail after cropping or just a little bit more definition in 3/4 tones. The lede image of the Reflecting Pool was shot with Cortex Camera. I enhanced the shadows and saturation in Snapseed (Free).

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 7:00am PDT

The Modern building has such great lines, contrast, and open space and I love how this corner of the foyer so geometrically converges with building and sky. This image didn’t quite turn out the way I’d planned. The windows were filled with an early morning blue sky and the photo I saw was a vivid blue sky contrasted with the darkened gray of the concrete in the shadows. As often happens, my iPhone 5S didn’t quite see the same photo I did. The sky was blue but not the vivid, deep blue I wanted it to be. I applied a slight overall blue tint in Gélo ($0.99) which instead had the effect of applying a light blue photo filter to the image. This did some pretty cool stuff with the texture of the concrete. I brought the image into SimplyB&W (Free) to remove the color and really bring out the contrast and detail.

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 7:06am PDT

Big thanks to @dtrannosaurus for letting me steal a little bit of her soul. This is raw. Not processed at all. If I were to do anything to it, I might crop the top in a little bit. Sometimes, your camera is ready, you turn your head, and the shot is there — it all comes together for an instant.

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 8:15am PDT

Lines, light, color. I used SKRWT ($1.99) to skew the perspective of this photo adding height and scale to the gallery. I then used Snapseed to saturate the hell out of the image, which really enhanced the blue in Jenny Holzer’s “The Weight of Words”.

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 8:29am PDT

Another image with almost no processing. Shooting fluorescent lights (neon as well) is difficult because the light oscillates at frequencies that don’t always mesh with the iPhone’s camera. I got lucky with this capture. The iPhone saw and captured the colors of the installation better than I’d have hoped without blowing out the highlights in the bulbs. That it also captured the glow of the light on the wall behind it was an added surprise. I amped up the colors to 11 using Snapseed’s saturation tool.

A photo posted by Life In LoFi (@lifeinlofi) on Jun 6, 2015 at 8:22am PDT

This is my favorite piece in The Modern’s collection and it’s tough to photograph in this gallery during regular hours. The piece itself is very surreal and visually it has a lot of forced perspective by design. With all of the improvements in the iPhone’s camera over the years, it’s easy to forget that mobile photography is an art form chock full of limitations. One of the things I love about iPhoneography is knowing what my camera can and can’t do and the challenge of shooting around those limitations. When it all comes together and you get your shot, that’s a “yesss!” moment. I took dozens of shots to capture just the right balance I was looking for. I think the shadows from the gallery’s lighting are as much a part of Martin Puryear’s “Ladder for Booker T. Washington” as the piece itself. Again, I used Simply B&W to convert to black & white, experimenting with the different color filters until I found one that gave the walls weight and the ladder contrast. There is a cropped version on LoFi’s Instagram feed, but this is a classic example of how even a fairly minor crop can change an image.

The trio who created Camera+ have just released Vee for Video ($1.99), a new video app which brings the total-all-in-one-workflow of Camera+ to iPhone video — a pretty revolutionary feature when it was first released.

I just downloaded it. It looks really slick and they may have succeeded in making a “Camera+ for video” which is a very good thing. The app stresses high-quality and I’m looking forward to testing the video stabilization on my iPhone 5S, a device that doesn’t natively support video stabilization. The Ghost feature looks pretty slick as well.

Most off all, I’m looking forward to testing how fast it all is. Video on iPhone is a slow, CPU-consuming process. We’ll see how the team has optimized the app and workflow to do all it says and does it at a speed that won’t make me say “Eff it.” At $2, the app is very reasonably priced.

Life In LoFi will play with the app over the weekend, but here’s a link, a video, a pressie, and more from the app’s co-developer Lisa Bettany to get you started.

Vee is a universal app (iOS only) that combines video shooting and editing together into one seamless process. We also have a bunch of cool capture and editing options, but really we think the app is exciting because of the workflow it enables. It helps you turn videos from one long clip, or lots of small clips that just sit in your camera roll waiting to be edited, into fun videos that let you tell a story that you want to share (you can even add a soundtrack from iTunes).

“Shooting/editing on mobile has been broken until now, because every editing app was design as a secondary process vs integrated with shooting,” says Lisa Bettany, the app’s cofounder.

“We found that we were shooting videos and never watching them again. They just took up space in my camera roll and we never went back and edited them because it was too much work. We changed that with photos with Camera+ and made it so you could edit something easily from your phone and share it instantly. We wanted to do the same with Vee, allowing users to make creative videos and story telling easily. Vee combines shooting and editing into one process, allowing users to combine short clips into one seamless video to easily capture memories and share them.”

It’s iOS exclusive, and takes advantage of tons of things you can only do on iOS. We’re doing real time filters while capturing 240fps on the latest devices. We maintain the full 1080p widescreen quality the whole way thru the app. We support background exporting and sharing uses the system extensions to hook into any apps you have.

Here are highlights from the extensive Vee for Video App Store listing:

Shoot stunning videos

Vee brings together shooting and editing, making it easy to capture and share life’s moments. Finally shooting video doesn’t mean a cluttered camera roll and a weekend lost to editing. You add clips to your video and work with them using simple, intuitive controls. You can work on multiple videos at once, and save to your camera roll or share it with the world when you’re ready.

Tell a story

With multiple clips you tell a story. With Vee you shoot clips and they add to your video’s timeline. You can then reorder, trim, adjust speed, and add filters to them. And you can just keep on shooting. You shoot and edit from the same screen.

High Quality

Shoot up to 1080p Full HD, 16:9 widescreen. Shoot up to 240fps on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, 120fps on the iPhone 5S and iPad Air 2, and 60fps on the iPhone 5, iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini.

18 Live Video Filters

Other Vee Features

Stabilizer – we use your device’s sensors to eliminate camera wobble. On the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus we also have a PRO stabilization mode. You have to see this to believe it, it’s like your phone is on rails!

Soundtrack – Add a soundtrack to your video by picking a track from your iTunes library. Control the mix with your video, so you can choose between blaring soundtrack, background music, or anything in between.

Focus & exposure

Ghost – can you say stop motion? With ghost you get a ghostly image of your last frame when you’re shooting, so you can line up the next shot.

Light – because sometimes it’s dark.

Background Video Sharing and Uploading — Vee shows you the status of your uploads, and allows you to cancel them, too. If you upload on WiFi we’ll stick to WiFi, so you won’t get unexpected bills. We’ll let you know if you do try to upload on cellular so you have peace of mind.

I’ve had my new Apple Watch for a few days. I bought the cheapest one I could get away with, but did get the larger size due to my bulky wrist.

It’s a very nice debut for a 1.0 product. I haven’t seen any glitches, and the battery life has been more than adequate. I’ve used it pretty heavily because it is new, and I usually turn in at night with 30-40% battery life remaining.

I was particularly interested in how the Apple Watch related to iPhone photography, and the answers are pretty positive. For apps that are compatible, you get the ability to control your iPhone camera without having to touch it. Pretty nice for tripod shots, and it’s a similar advantage to having a cable release on a DSLR. No touching means no vibration. Really helpful in low light situations, and especially helpful with time exposures. It’s also nice for getting into those selfies.

I tried using the watch as a remote on several camera apps, starting with Apple’s own app. Actually, and not surprisingly, it worked the best. Unlike the other apps, Your watch can actually launch the app from your watch. You can set focus and white balance remotely, and take a photo instantly or ask for a three second delay. It worked fine. You can switch to square photos from the normal aspect ratio on the phone, but not control that from the watch. Remote video isn’t possible. If you try, the watch sets your iPhone back to photo mode.

Apps are loaded to the watch from your iPhone using the Apple Watch app. Any apps that will run on the watch are listed within the app, you just have to flip an install button.

I tried some of the other compatible apps. Camera+ had similar controls, but the app has to be up and running on your iPhone or the remote won’t work. ProCamera spun the cursor for awhile, then suggested I launch the app on the iPhone too. Same with Hydra. It’s clearly not the developers fault. Apple is going to have to grant them more permissions. Maybe in the new SDK that will get announced in a couple of days. Instagram also has an Apple Watch extension.

If you are using an app without a watch extension, you can use the Apple Watch digital Crown as a remote shutter IF the app supports using your iPhone volume control as the shutter.

Over time we will see more and more apps Apple Watch enabled, and I think shortly we will see native apps for the iPhone, not just these extensions. I’m also looking for companies like Nikon and Canon to offer apps that will remotely trigger their DSLRs with the watch.

All the Apple watch camera apps are pretty simple so far. As mentioned, no remote video, no automated long exposures. What you do get is a helpful way to take pictures away from your camera, and all these apps provide viewing the live scene before you take the picture, and you can view the result on your watch too. Turning the digital crown lets you zoom in and out.

Clearly, we’ll see more and more from the Apple watch in terms of integration with photography. Since you really need the iPhone with you to get full functionality from the Apple Watch, I doubt we’ll see editing apps on the watch, which seems pretty impractical. As a photo viewer, the watch is pretty good, but sometimes photos that are on your watch or the cloud can take a while to load.

We are in the very early days of the Apple watch, but it already has some clever photo options built in. I don’t think it is a must buy for photographers, (or maybe for anyone else). I do like Apple Pay on the watch, and I find I’m pulling my iPhone out of my pocket for reading mail and messages has has been almost completely replaced by glancing at my wrist. The remote photography options are good, but limited at this point.

You may have missed this tidbit in the constant stream of tech news, but Google has given iPhone owners their very neat VR app that has been entertaining Google users for a year on Android.

While we wait for the expensive Oculus Rift experience to show up, Google went ahead and did a low end solution called Google Cardboard, so called because you can make a viewer yourself out of cardboard, or even buy viewers from third parties including Amazon. Just search the Amazon site for ‘Google Cardboard’. Many of the viewers, sell for under ten dollars all the way up to about fifty. Price is determined by build quality, cardboard or better plastic.

What is Google Cardboard?

Put simply, it allows you to play VR content back on your iPhone, which is placed in a two lensed viewer that gives you stereoscopic 3D. Even better, using the iPhone motion and directional sensor, as you look left right, up or down your perspective changes in real time. Even better, some apps pan the audio so if you have some headphones plugged in you’ll get aural perspective changes to match the way you are looking.

So why are we looking at this? Easy. We are photography nuts, and using our iPhones to give us a dramatic VR experience is something you just might want to try.

To start, you’ll need the Google Cardboard app, which just appeared in the App Store. The app itself has some impressive demos built right in, including the ability to look at a museum collection from any angle, and Urban Hike where you can use VR to check out cities like Paris or Tokyo, and there’s a few more goodies like a #D immersive kaleidoscope. You select from the menu by moving your heard side to side.

There is more content up on the app store, some designed for different VR headsets, but they work well. Many are free, some cost a couple of dollars. Searching the app store with ‘Google Cardboard’ will bring them up. A really impressive VR environment is the Dive City rollercoaster app. Start the app, put your phone in your VR headset, and you’ll be on a rollercoaster that lets you look up, down, and in 360 lateral directions. The 3D is amazing, and you might even get some motion sickness. There’s also an app called Dinosaurs Everywhere that will superimpose creatures on a live view from your camera all in 3D. As you turn, you’ll see more coming from every direction.

Trying it out

I gave Google Cardboard a try with an inexpensive viewer from Amazon. I started up one of the demos, put my phone in the viewer, and had some fun on a rollercoaster looking in any direction. With headphones on, it was even better. I tried some of the Google demos, and they were mostly still photos but the VR worked well. One drawback is that at this point, you can’t control the phone while it is inside the headset. We will likely see some bluetooth controllers or other solutions if this takes off. I also tried some YouTube videos, both side by side 3D and the VR variety. They were pretty compelling. Search YouTube for 3D SBS (side-by-side) and you will have plenty to watch.

Besides being cool demos, there are a variety of apps that can take VR photos, and you should be able to use the Google headsets to view them. You won’t get 3D, but you can move your head around and get the effect. Of course you don’t need a Google Headset to do that, because there is no 3D component to these apps. I do think with Google Cardboard in the app store we will start to see apps that can create VR environments that work with Google Cardboard right on your iPhone. Google has also added a YouTube channel killed with 3D VR content you can explore for free. There’s sports and travel videos, horror movies, just about anything that can work in 3D.

Is there a future for VR on the iPhone?

Is this the future of immersive photography? Maybe. No one is going to like to wear the crazy headsets, and the Google Glass project never really caught on. But Google Cardboard VR is now accessible on your iPhone, and there is a lot of free content you can play around with. We’ll see more content coming quickly, and there are already some cool games available.

I’m looking forward to the day I can create some of my own 3D VR environments and share them with others. And of course, Apple may feel the pressure and offer something built for iOS. That would be great.

If the idea interests you, get a cheap headset for your iPhone, download the Google Cardboard app, and have a go.

Camera+ ($2.99) is an outstanding all-in-one camera replacement app it just got a little outstandinger. A new 6.3 update released Wednesday now features selfie-cam and lets you quickly access the front camera from your iPhone’s lock/Home/Today/Notifcations/whatever screen.

With a drag and a tap, you can now instantly get to the front-facing camera from the Camera+ Today Widget. The new Selfie button has been added to the Camera+ Today widget. Tapping it takes you straight to your device’s front camera in Camera+, no matter how you have your app or iPhone preferences set. It’s a convenient new feature that, like Home Screen access in a previous update, can save you a tap or three. That can be an eternity if you’re trying to get a critical shot.

Install Camera+ on Your Home Screen

To access the selfie button on your Home/Today screen, you’ll need to install the Camera+ Today widget. You’ll first need to go the settings in the Camera+ app. Scroll down toward the bottom of the screen and select Extensions. In the Notification Center Widget settings, be sure at least Take Photo is selected.

While you are in this screen, be sure to read up on how to install and enable the Camera+ Photos Extension so you can edit in Camera+ straight from Apple’s Photos app and other apps that support “Open In…”.

Next, swipe down onscreen to enter Notification Center. At the bottom of the screen, select Edit. Add Camera+ to your Notification Widget by selecting the green plus sign. Once added, you can move it to nearly any position in the widget. I recommend you move it towards the top for easy access.

Camera+ for Apple Watch

The new update also includes a Camera+ Watch app. With it, you’re able to snap photos remotely, along with triggering shots via the timer. Until we get our Dick Tracy Apple Watch, this is standard camera stuff for Apple Watch integration.

I think Camera+ is by far the best overall all-in-one camera app out there, but I prefer the features of more specialized apps. If you’re like me and own Camera+ but have it relegated to page 9 of your Home Screen, the last couple of recent updates have added some really cool features that make it hard to overlook.

Almost every smartphone owner has taken out their phone at a concert to capture their favourite band in action and wondered why their photos don’t look anything like the photos they have seen in the music press.

Having had an interest in the arts from a very young age I had always been on the lookout for a creative outlet of my own. Before discovering iPhoneography I toyed with the idea of being a musician. The only stumbling block was my complete lack of any musical ability. Although this doesn’t seem to have stopped a lot of the ‘artists’ currently infesting the upper reaches of the charts. Even though I have given up on my dream of rock stardom in favour of photography I still love music of all kinds and as a result I am always on the lookout for ways I can combine the two.

Shooting Live Music with an iPhone

Almost every smartphone owner has taken out their phone at a concert to capture their favourite band in action and wondered why their photos don’t look anything like the photos they have seen in the music press. Usually the problem is that they are trying to capture their musical heroes rocking out on a huge stage hundreds of feet away. Professional music photographers are usually in a pit at the front of the stage with super fast zoom lenses whereas the rest of us are in Row Z with an iPhone that has a barely functional digital zoom. This will, obviously, have an effect on the images that they get.

When shooting in a larger venue you should try to concentrate on capturing the overall atmosphere of the gig. Most modern bands will have spectacular light shows or else the venue itself could be worth capturing. It is all about building memories of your experience of the night.

The first photo here was taken at a festival that takes place at a castle in my home town each August. It’s a spectacular venue. There are a number of stages and one of them is in an old courtyard. I remember being there watching the sun set behind the stage thinking it doesn’t get much better than this.

In this second example, taken at another gig, I was too far away from the stage to get a good shot of the band but the lights shining through the dry ice around the venue reminded me of the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So I just took loads of shots on burst mode and hoped for the best. When I was reviewing the shots the next day this one stood out and perfectly capture what I had experienced the night before. Burst mode is very useful in these situations as the lights will be constantly changing and it will be very difficult to time your shot with the lights.

A far better option if you want to use your iPhone to shoot live music is to go to gigs in smaller, more intimate venues. You will have a far better chance of getting close to the stage. You can also mingle with the crowd at the front of the stage and capture the overall excitement of the gig. Always bear in mind that the iPhone is not great in low light conditions so you should try to use the bands lighting to your advantage.

In this shot I was only a few feet back from the stage in the middle a few very enthusiastic fans obviously enjoying the night’s entertainment. This where music can be at it best. Small venues with true fans completely caught up in the moment.

As I mentioned earlier, burst mode can be very useful when shooting live music as the scene can change so rapidly in front of you with the constant movement of the band, the audience and the lights. You can end up getting ‘lucky’ shots where all these elements come together. I like this pic I got at the same gig as the image above. It looks like this particular fan is so caught up in the music he is attempting to join in by playing the keyboard.

Arrange Proper Photo Shoots

The main problem with shooting musicians in a live setting is how random everything is. You have no control over their movements on stage or the lighting so luck is a big factor in getting any shots that you might be happy with. By organising a photo shoot you have far more control over the look and mood of the images you get. There will always be up and coming musicians in your local area looking for a break. By offering your services to these bands or musicians they can end up with some unique photos and you will get invaluable experience in the process.

In these two photos, a local country and western singer/songwriter asked me to do a few shots for him. He wanted something a bit different from the usual photos you would normally see in that genre of music. The advantage of someone coming to you and giving you carte blanche in terms of the overall look of the photos means you can pick the location and the style that you want to go for. The end result was something I don’t think Garth Brooks would’ve been too happy with but I liked them.

But you are not always going to have that level of control. A friend asked me to get a few shots of his band in the middle of a video shoot. In this case the video director had picked the location and set up all the lighting. I had to fit in a few shots between takes. Even though I didn’t have control over a lot of the elements when shooting these photos I could still try and pose the band in a way that suited the surroundings.

As you can see there are many different approaches to using your iPhone to capture your passion for music. Don’t be afraid to experiment. And you don’t always have to use black and white but it can be effective.

Got your own Killer Concert Photos tips? Share them in the comments below!

]]>22Marty Yawnickhttp://typeadesign.comhttp://lifeinlofi.com/?p=286962015-06-04T16:52:16Z2015-06-02T23:54:51ZFrom Life in LoFi: iPhoneography:

Instaflash Pro is our App of the Day. It's FREE right now for a very short time. This is a great image scrubbing iPhone photo app. If you missed this freebie before, here's your chance to grab it and save five bucks.

Instaflash Pro is our iPhone photo App of the Day, and it’s FREE again today, June 2, in the App Store. That’s a savings of $4.99. If you missed it before, you just saved a 5 spot.

Read on for more and for the App Store link.

It’s a slow App Store deal week (I think the devs might be catching on to us…) and Instaflash Pro gets discounted every few weeks, but that does not diminish the quality or usefulness of this great iPhone photo app. Even with the improved cameras of the newer iPhones, Instaflash Pro (along with Perfectly Clear and Noiseware) are my go-to tools for image scrubbing when needed. A few tweaks and it can take a flat image and make it pop before you share or app it up.

Photoshop power-users know how fast and how well its Shadows/Highlights tool can be to enhance and bring out the details of dark areas of an image without effecting the properly exposed bits. Instaflash brings this tool as well as a ton of other fast and easy power user image fixes to iPhone. I use Instaflash often to quickly restore color, vibrance, and detail to shadows and 3/4 tones to an image, just like Photoshop. While not as effective as Noiseware, the Denoise tool in the app works by using luminance, a way to remove image noise while holding detail. For this deal, this is the full version of Instaflash Pro, not the standard version with extra in-app purchases. All tools are unlocked in this Pro version. The recent deletion of Adobe Photoshop Touch increases the value of having this on your iPhone or iPad.

Built on the same technology that drives the much more costly ACDSee Photoshop plugin, Instaflash Pro definitely belongs in an iPhoneographer’s toolbox. I recommend it at $5. For free, this one’s a no-brainer.

The price will go back up in a day or so. Grab it now while it’s free. App Store link is below.

Download Instaflash Pro:

Please share this post on Facebook and Twitter today so your friends can save some cash, too.

Life In LoFi’s App of the Day is a new-ish feature where we scour the Photo & Video section of the App Store to discover great deals on the best photo apps and hidden gems — one a day when we find a good one. Grab them fast because these deals don’t last long and the price can go up at any time.

Camera51 (free) is interesting and unique. The idea behind the app is to to have it analyze your photo before you trigger the shot, and give you a guide as to the best composition. The photo can be a landscape, a group picture, even a selfie.

To use the app, you load it, then point it to what you want to photograph. The app will identify objects of interest in the frame, including faces, shapes, lines and other criteria, and then have you align an icon that looks like your iPhone with another icon that marks what you want to aim for. Animated arrows will help you move to where the app thinks you need to be. When you have done that, the photo is taken and saved. The app also looks for objects at the side of the frame that don’t belong there, like a thumb or out of focus object, and it will suggest you change your orientation to eliminate it. The app allows up to three objects of interest in a photo, and there is a manual mode so if you don’t like the choices being made, you can simply take your pictures the old way.

Using Camera51

In use, the app did pretty well. I tried some photos with a prominent object in the frame, and the app steered me to a nicely balanced image. Landscapes also worked pretty well, and it looks like the app is trying to follow the basic “rule of thirds” to offset objects of interest from the boring center of the frame. For selfies, it does want to center the photo up, which seems the correct approach, and it will automatically take the photo when it is satisfied, rather than wait for you to click to take the picture. That seems the way to do it with a selfie, where the less motion the better. In normal photography, using the rear camera, you have to trigger the exposure. The app supports multiple people in the selfie.

The algorithms seem pretty solid and I think in general the decisions the software makes are reasonable. Of course, if you have any experience shooting, you’ll want to frame these photos yourself. That’s part of the creative process. But if you are a novice or don’t want to bother, Camera51 will do a nice job of getting you a reasonable photo. Photos are saved to your camera roll, and you can load them into any photo editor you choose if you want to make more adjustments.

The app also features a Quick Share option, letting you go directly form the app to email, Facebook or Twitter.

Camera51 supports video as well as still photos, and using or not using the flash.

The Bottom Line

Camera51 is easy to use. The onscreen controls are not arcane. Of course proper framing is subjective, and you may or may not agree with the choices made. having a manual mode gives you a choice. The app is speedy enough, it takes just a moment to analyze the scene and make a composition suggestion.

Your photos are saved a full resolution, or you can adjust that down in the settings. The app works in either portrait or landscape mode.

At a price of free, Camera51 is worth a look. It’s an interesting, and useful technology, especially for non-seasoned iPhoneographers.

It’s been a while since we did one of these. Actually, if you read our Flipboard Magazine (and you should…), we regularly share iPhone photos selected from our Flickr Group.

One of the great things about iPhoneography galleries is that they give you inspiration and good ideas on how others are shooting. Maybe you’ll see an app or a technique that you’d like to have in your toolbox. Maybe you’ll see a photo that inspires you to try similar lighting or a crop you might now have thought of. Maybe you’ll see something in a photo someone else shot that you would have missed otherwise and think to yourself “I’d like to try that.” And sometimes you just have to go, “That’s pretty cool….”

Life In LoFi’s iPhoneography showcases have always been about what the iPhone camera can do with appropriate light and some creativity.

With a nod to Edi Caves iPhoneOgenic’s monthly showcases, here are 31 images submitted to LoFi’s Flickr group from the month of May. Collected here are gorgeous landscapes, powerful portraits, and exceptional iPhone art abstracts. This gallery features a lot of great use of light and shadow. Some iPhoneographers took excellent advantage of the lines, curves, and geometry of their subjects. One or two simply created lines and curves. There are several portraits of everyday people in this gallery that are strong, or playful, or simply capture the moment. Some artists here creatively mashed up several styles.

Big thank yous go to the iPhoneographers and artists who created and shared their works here:

Waldemar Blazej Nowak

Marzia Bellini

Susan Blase

Brad Kelly

Peter H

Denrael

Gianluca Ricoveri

Andrew Hollingsworth

Michael Alli

julia Aldred

Wayman Stairs

Diana Nicholette Jeon

bertrand taoussi

Hussam Eissa

Mandolina Moon

Dixon Hamby

Aylin Argun

ade santora

Jerzy Jachym

auketts

kirstenfenton

lasttodie1.1

Karen Axelrad

Elena Penkova

Wayne Greer

lezard_graphic

Michelle Robinson

All links go back to the artist’s Flickr page, so you can explore more of their work. I encourage you to do so. Of the thousands of images submitted, it’s tough to narrow them down to less than three dozen.

This is the state of iPhoneography for June 1, 2015. Enjoy the photos. Be inspired.

=M=

Submitting Your Photos

Submissions are welcome for any photos shot and processed with iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad only. No desktop or Android processed images, please. To have your works considered, just upload, post or share your images to Life In LoFi’s Flickr group. Images must be shot and processed using only an iDevice. We look at all of ’em. Your photos may be featured in a future gallery.

When you upload, please be sure your sharing settings are set so that images can be embedded using HTML.

FlickStackr is a good app for sharing to Flickr. We’ve been using it for years. You can also use the official Flickr app straight from your device.

One of my favorite iOS photo editors, Snapseed (free), has just pushed out an update that adds back a feature that had been killed and was sorely missed. Complaints must have been overwhelming to Google/Nik software, so the filter has made it back to the latest version.

What’s New?

Snapseed has been a favorite editor of mine since it first launched. It’s powerful, and it’s free. Improvements in this latest version include the ability to copy, paste and hide Control Points when using the Selective tool. It easily allows you to work on a particular part of an image and see the changes without committing to a save. Similar tools are in the Nik suite of apps that run on both Mac and PC platforms.

The latest iOS version also allows you to export flat copies of your images so they can easily be opened in Lightroom and file sharing apps like Dropbox. Google also say the app has several performance and stability improvements, along with better rendering in Snapseed’s terrific HDRScape filters.

Using the newest Snapseed

I gave the app a spin and found it responsive and there weren’t any bugs I could see or crashes. For my daily use, I really wish the app had a white balance control in the Tune Image feature. To me that seems like a significant omission.

The returning Grunge filter is nicely implemented, with an almost infinite array of variations. I took a photo of an old window at a ghost town and was pleased with how I could age and stylize it. Nice to have that feature back.

HDRScape — probably my most used feature in Snapseed, has increased range and variability, but as it was, Snapseed did about the best single image HDR renders I’d seen on any platform.

Photos are saved in native resolution, but that can be cropped and re-sized.

The Bottom Line

Snapseed is certainly the best free photo editor around, and with the recent release of Pixelmator ($4.99) for iPhone I think it’s possible to work from those two apps and have the ability to do just about anything you could dream of with iPhone photography.

It’s also good to see Snapseed evolving, and listening to customers who sometimes have better ideas than the developers.

Snapseed works in portrait and landscape mode, with on-screen controls rotating to support your choice. The only part of the app that lacks this consistency is when you load your image. Your photos only orient properly from portrait mode. The save dialog works in either position.

I can’t say enough good things about Snapseed. I hope Google continues to support it and add new features and power. This update enhances app performance, and returns the Grunge filter which was much missed by many.

Snapseed requires iOS 8. It’s a universal app, and it is optimized for the latest larger iPhones.